Well the euphoria would soften the criticism, but if he would be playing as he is now: badly both on offence and defence, he would get criticized, of course there would be people that would say we're winning he just needs to get himself into game shape, but now when people have a sense of urgency fans are requesting a trade

LOL, yeah I'm trying to stay patient with him. But looks like Casey is keeping a short to medium leash on him. Looking at game logs on nights where he's shot the ball poorly he's played around 25 minutes only. The only occassions where he's shot the ball poorly and still gotten big minutes are the occassions he's contributed by doing other things like rebounding, blocks, steals etc. Nice to know Casey monitors his production and effor so closely.

Yeah, a few lucky bounces and calls here and there and we'd be looking at 6 to 8 wins right now. The team is better than their record right now.

Not sure about the whole "lucky bounces" thing. A lot of games come down to a lucky bounce, but there are a lot of things that put a team in that situation. In yesterday's game vs. Orlando, for example, the Raptors shot 60% from the free throw line. They got away with it, but a team that doesn't convert at the line is going to find itself losing a lot of close games that could have been wins.

Realistically speaking, I think we should be 4-6 right now, with the Utah game the one that we pissed away. I won't point to the opener vs. Indy because we stole that game back beating Indy at home with a 5 point fourth quarter (so those 2 games cancel each other out).

At 4-6, the Raptors would be 1 game behind the 8th seed. And even at our current 3-7, we're just 2 games behind. As poorly as we've played to start the year, we're still very much within striking distance. Outside of the top 4 teams, nobody is really running away.

3-7 is about what I expected given the schedule. Having said that, I'm not sure it's what management expected given that this is supposed to be a team competing for a playoff spot.

10 of the next 12 on the road will go a long way toward determining where this team is in a few weeks. If they come out of that 7-15 or worse it's going to be next to impossible for them to climb out of that hole.

Sometimes it just feels better to get blown out than to lose it at the end.

Actually, no. I'd much rather lose a close game than be blown out. at least with a close game it gives you the false confidence that you competed and had actually had a shot at winning, whereas blowouts usually leave you feeling much more defeated